Celebrating our Pharmacy Team
March is Pharmacy Appreciation Month, recognizing and applauding all of the work that pharmacy teams do throughout the community. It is a great time to highlight the amazing work that our team here at St. Mary’s does to support our patients, our staff and the entire community.
Our pharmacy team consists of 13 pharmacists, 18 pharmacy technicians, and the leadership team of Laurie, Grant and Vickie. This team ensures safe, effective and timely medication therapy throughout the hospital.
Our pharmacy technicians work directly with patients and their care team to complete medication histories upon admission to hospital. This team manages all aspects of drug distribution including packaging drugs and identifying them with barcodes, which is important for medication safety.
Each one of our pharmacists has a nursing unit that they most commonly work with, which allows them to truly integrate with the care teams in each unit. Our pharmacists are up on the floor rounding with these care teams, optimizing the patient centric care that we practice. This team of pharmacists identifies and action-plans the most effective and safe drug therapies for patients, and they provide a key resource for other members of our healthcare teams at any time.
Did you know that 80% of orders
that are submitted to our pharmacy
team are verified within 30 minutes
of receiving them, 24/7?
Beyond the work that they do on a day-to-day basis here at the hospital, the pharmacy team was instrumental both in the early days of the COVID pandemic as well as throughout the last two years navigating the virus.
“As the science changed, and new research studies were completed, the pharmacy team here at St. Mary’s were, and continue to be, key in rolling out new drug and COVID therapies both to patients in the hospital, as well as those being treated as outpatients. As drug shortages started to impact us here at the hospital, the pharmacy team came together to manage these shortages and ensure that we were, and still are, able to effectively treat our patients without compromise,” Grant Bunston, Pharmacist Lead.
And it wasn’t just within the walls of St. Mary’s that this teamwork and support was noticed and felt.
“The pharmacy team at St. Mary’s really pulled together and stepped up to support the COVID vaccine rollout throughout the region – pharmacists and technicians throughout the region were there when we needed them – but the support was especially there from the team at St. Mary’s. They were instrumental in ensuring the success of the rollout and providing that support whenever and wherever they could,” Vickie Murray, Integrated Director of Pharmacy.
As we celebrate the pharmacy team here at St. Mary’s, we also want to acknowledge the work they do with the team at Grand River Hospital. The collaborative mindset that these teams have with each other, ensures that our community is getting the best care possible.
If you happen to cross paths with one of our pharmacy team members this month, make sure you stop and take a second to thank them for all that they do!
Look out for a video in the next few weeks, made by one of our amazing pharmacy team members, highlighting the work that the team does. We can’t wait to share it with all of you.